The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to control of multi-carrier uplink behavior for multi-carrier wireless communication systems. Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communication system may include a number of base stations to simultaneously support communication for multiple mobile terminals. Each mobile terminal communicates with one or more base stations via transmissions on the forward and reverse links. A reference to a “downlink” refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and a reference to an “uplink” refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. The system may support operation on multiple carriers. Each carrier may be associated with a particular center frequency and a particular bandwidth. Each carrier may carry pilot and overhead information to support operation on the carrier, and carry data for terminals operating on the carrier.
Typically, in two-way conversations, each party speaks for sometime during which a communication system transmits the party's speech (e.g., less than half of the time) and pauses for other times during which the communication system transmits silence or background noise. Discontinuous transmission (DTX) during the silence (or background noise) period may have little impact on the perceptual quality of the conversation but may reduce inter-/intra-cell interference (therefore potentially increasing the system capacity) and conserving the battery power of a mobile terminal used for the conversation. When multiple carriers may be used on the uplink from a mobile terminal, the configuration of DTX can present challenges.